Archive

Over the weekend, Apple released an update for a kernel extension blacklist used by System Integrity Protection on OS X El Capitan. This blacklist is a security measure to help Apple block kernel extensions which have been found to be harmful or problematic for OS X. This update belonged to a category of updates which Apple has set to install automatically and in the background, so its installation would have been both automatic and invisible.

Unfortunately, this blacklist update appears to have inadvertently contained the kernel extension information for Apple’s own Ethernet drivers. This is a problem because blocking the Ethernet drivers means your Mac will not be able to connect to your network via an Ethernet connection.

Apple appears to have quickly recognized the problem and has released a follow-up update which fixes this issue.